JAN KENNETH WECKMANNot Going Somewhere? 6.2.2021 – 7.3.2021

In his exhibition, visual artist Jan Kenneth Weckman continues a series of drawn paintings from his earlier exhibitions. The works are recognisably Weckman – a powerfully graphic overall impression, but at the same time the paintings feature vibrant lines and fractured fields of colour. The works bear a strong mark of handicraft.

The artist’s meditative approach has created works in which the landscape and its meandering terrain and the maps formed from the landscape are merged into mind maps and transformed into each other. Webs created from Weckman’s recurrent graphic lines are intersected here and there by painterly areas, gaps and routes that lead somewhere – or impede access. As elements in juxtaposition with each other, the webs and gaps within them bring subject matter and performance to the images. Indeed, Weckman’s paintings seem to be as much about exploring what painting is about as what it can propound at the same time. His works engage in a dialogue between form – silence, and content – openness. He asks: if we can, then what can we see in them?

Weckman’s works can just as well be examined at the practical as at the theoretical level. For the artist, the research dimension is an integral part of his artistic work and always more or less hidden in the works. This is also reflected in the names of works referring to philosophy. Opening up these names more often than not requires an explanation from the artist, even though the works themselves and their names naturally give the viewer the freedom of interpretation.

Alongside the paintings, Weckman places a series of his digitally drawn pigment ink prints. Digital drawing has resulted in the creation of works that continue the world of paintings, works that can be edited endlessly to pixel-accuracy with delete and save functions. A special feature in the works is that individual work-specific texts can be added to order with the agreement of the artist.

Rauli Heino

Jan Kenneth Weckman, artist and graphic artist, Doctor of Fine Arts (b. 1946) works with drawing, painting and digital graphics. Weckman graduated from the Finnish Art Academy School in 1973. He held his first art exhibition in 1969, but it was not until his exhibition in 1978 that his career as an artist really began. He has held retrospective exhibitions at the Amos Anderson Art Museum (2000) and at the Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova museum in Turku (2003).